


war claims broken hearts

by Elhanore



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 18:26:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20475545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elhanore/pseuds/Elhanore
Summary: this is unnecessarily sad i think, and not quite as it was in cannon. itachi finds shisui's body by the river after his encounter with danzo, and comes to understand that senseless violence just really really sucks. this is very short, but not that sweet.





	war claims broken hearts

it only really hit him when he saw the body the next day. 

itachi took a long, cold glance at the way shisui’s arms twisted in all the wrong places. where flowers of blueish lilac and yellow bruises bloomed over his skin, colours growing ever more vivid against the stark, pale contrast death had left like a shroud. shisui’s curls lay plastered against his forehead as if they were painted on. the rushing waters of the river had smoothened the usual mess down to a tangled, shiny halo framing what was left of his face in a way that would make even the holiest of saints blush. 

itachi looked at the body for exactly fourty-three seconds before becoming violently ill and succumbing to the tumultuous turns of his intestines. the world spun around him as he ran the back of his hand over his mouth. his breathing was ragged and halting. every breath had to be dragged painstakingly across his teeth in order to reach his lungs. he didn’t really think he’d be all that bothered if he suddenly stopped breathing at all. lying down next to his cousin on the narrow patch of sand by the waters, growing steadily bluer in the face. he shook his head and simultaneously shook the thought out of his skull. there were many important things on his agenda. he could die another day.

still, it took him a while to throw a second glance at the body of his best (only?) friend in the world. if you looked at it from a specific angle it was almost easy to make yourself think that shisui was smiling. broken teeth and bleeding gums. smiling from the other side of death, as if to reassure him that it wasn’t as bad as everybody always made it out to be. itachi felt the same sharp pain sting the back of his eyes that he had felt an awful lot these past few months. he didn’t really like to cry, though. his father always claimed he was too much of an adult to submit to his feelings like that. too much of a man. but itachi was thirteen and sometimes had to struggle very hard not to cry, and he really didn’t think the fault lay with his fathers’ ideals of maturity or masculinity. he was a very emotional kid, itachi always thought. couldn’t everybody else see that? 

the sun was beating down harshly on the back of his neck. venomous rays searing stripes of pale red into his skin. he rubbed at the spot with his fingertips. his skin felt paper-thin. an easy gateway for the sun to pierce all the way through him, exposing even the most secret curve of his bones, the most intimate nooks and crannies of his soul. itachi took a few steps back into the shadows. occupational hazard. his eyes never lingered far from the body on the riverbank, but never quite met it directly either. he didn’t like seeing all of the blood, all of the gore and broken bones and marks of struggle. for a while now he had thought himself desensitized to the sight of death and misery, but the world kept finding little ways to remind him of his young age. 

itachi couldn’t be there when the others found the body. he couldn’t be there when they screamed and cried and fell to their knees in the shallows. he couldn’t be there when they saw the empty sockets where shisui’s eyes should be, and they could never know itachi hadn’t left the scene empty handed. shisui had been almost perfect – in the bloody, ruthless sort of way people in his line of work were perfect – his loss would weigh heavy on the clan’s morale. another ace dragged out of their sleeve. or perhaps shisui had been something more akin to a scalpel. their family now lacked the ability to perform a graceful coup d’etat, removing the people in power like a tumor. they had to resort to brute force and vicious strength. the family traditions were poorly maintained. 

though there was one last ting itachi found it in himself to do. the corpse looking so broken and defeated was something he needed the rest of the family to see. they needed to be reminded of the horrific truths which accompanied mortality, they needed to see that they were no better and no more immortal than the rest of the village. as much as he wanted to, itachi couldn’t close shisui’s eyes or lay his arms gently by his sides. he wanted a peaceful death for his friend, but this was not something he could give him. instead, he opted for the next best thing. 

slowly, he crept forwards until he was close enough to smell the early stages of moist decay. just as slowly he lowered himself onto his knees, digging around in his pocket for the tiny scrap of paper that had been burning a hole through his clothes the entire day. itachi hadn’t realised his fingers were shaking so badly until he tore the note as he was attempting to unfold it. the scrawling handwriting was just as ineligible as it always had been, and even with enhanced vision it was next to impossible to decipher anything shisui uchiha had written. the suicide note was short and sweet – as noble as its author was humble. again the stinging sensation reappeared behind his corneas. this time, the stinging escalated until his vision was blurred by tears. the back of his hand wiped them away before they made the note impossible to read. his eyes skimmed the words a few more times than absolutely necessary before he folded it down again and tucked it into shisui’s front pocket. 

itachi had to remember some of the breathing exercises he had been taught at work recently. it took him a few tries to stop the shaking in his limbs enough to be able to stand again. there was a new sensation clawing away at his young, already broken heart. it burnt hotly against his ribcage. he had never experienced this kind of anger before in his life, and it frightened him more than anything he had ever known.

**Author's Note:**

> okay, i know this isnt cannon. like, at all. but there are already multiple parts of the storyline that i flat out disagree with and think ought to be way more depressing. so i write out my frustrations in ridiculously short blurbs and end up posting them after i find the files six months later. also, i really like writing itachi as something other than the stoic, aloof figure we meet in the show.


End file.
